Articles

During any kind of research project, you're going to collect data. This data will vary depending on what you're studying, but you will need to create a data management plan no matter what. This is because it's vital you explain exactly how you will use data at every point during the data life cycle. Here's ten rules that will make creating your own plan simple.

Rule 1: Understand the research sponsor requirements

The first thing you must do is find out what is needed from you from your research sponsor. Each sponsor will have slightly different needs. “Even if you've worked with a sponsor before, it's always best to check to ensure they haven't recently changed their requirements”, - says Amber Coburn, an Operation Manager at Bigassignments.

"How can I get the information I need from this ocean of models? "- questioned the VP of Operations after going through the process repository built for his group. The repository had hundreds of models of different types. They were built over months of effort from Subject Matter Experts and Process / Business Architecture practitioners. He wanted to find out

What percentage of activities are automated and manual?

Which teams use a specific application?

How many teams are involved to execute a value stream?

How many people refer to models in the repository to perform their daily duties?

At what rate are different teams building these models? Etc

The information for which the VP of Operations was asking buried was in the repository - many times in multiple models. To answer each of question, the analyst may need to spend a couple of hours to go through multiple models, generate reports, analyze and then consolidate information.

We all know how to plan. From waterfall, we know how to over plan. But how much planning is necessary if you are using an agile approach? Here’s an idea…try starting the first piece of a project before you have the full plan. Radical thought? Did your heart skip a beat? Here’s why this experiment might change your attitude about planning.

Documenting a process generally results in at least a 25% gain in productivity – and often even greater gains. Translating work effort into discrete steps reduces confusion, drives consistency of execution, accelerates training, and usually uncovers efficiency opportunities along the way. But it comes with a risk – the risk of improving a segment of an organization to the detriment of other areas. We call this a localized improvement.

BPM market has undergone considerable change in the past 5 years. BPM is considered a disruptive technology within all areas of business -- front, back and middle office. Recently, this technology was only seriously used by very large corporations, but today smaller organizations are finding a way to incorporate it into their enterprise-wide application portfolios.

Will this trend result in “try finds agility” or are these organization in over their heads.

BPM Consulting Market

I have been consulting within the BPM industry from some time now. Initially I was exposed to the venerable BEA Systems’ AquaLogic BPM (now Oracle BPM). Being assimilated into Oracle, I got enabled with their popular BPEL engine.

The financial services industry has long been a driver for technology innovation. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, volatile regulations, increased demands for compliance, and a requirement for transparency necessitate the ability to quickly create and easily manage decisions across systems. This is a perfect use case for DMN and its incorporation in the evolution of disruptive “FinTech” systems has attempted to address some of these needs. As the DMN standard is solidified, platforms become more mature, and more people are educated with respect to its power, we can move to examining more places where it can (and will) play a critical role.

Here’s the deal. In order to get ahead as a company, you need to constantly be looking for ways to improve your processes. If you don’t and your competition does, they will be able to lower operating costs, undercut your prices, offer better quality and improve its service. And down that way ruin lies.

The question really isn’t ‘do I improve my processes?’ but ‘how do I improve my processes?’ One fantastic way to answer that question is ‘with Business Process Management’ or BPM for short. This is a powerful tool which will make sure you’ll be able to keep all of your business operations running effectively, efficiently and smoothly.

Since the 1990s, the importance of agility in the success of organizations has gradually come into the spotlight. As a result, more and more organizations are striving to increase their agility. This article serves as a foundation for a series of upcoming articles aimed at helping organizations in these efforts. Its purpose is to identify and clarify the nature of the four dimensions of business agility.

A “Next Level Evolution” model for Operational Excellence to integrate with Business Transformation under the broader concept of Enterprise Excellence was discussed in BPMinstitute.org article in May 20171.

As Part of a Business Transformation and Enterprise Excellence strategy, how can the business be challenged to innovate and improve products?

A Robust New Product Introduction (NPI) Process should be a core competency at all companies.

Let’s take a look at the methodology and set of tools/techniques of a Stage Gate Process.2

A process-centric organization works on the principle of dividing a task or a project into separate, individually executable stages to get efficient results. These processes go through their development lifecycle including stages of design, development, testing and quality check, etc. However, maintaining a ‘human-touch’ within the organization becomes tedious!

Such organizations tend to be exclusively result-oriented, as they divide projects into stages and the output of each stage should be as per the organization’s standards.